107 - Poetry with a Purpose: Biblical Poetics and Interpretation

Poetry with a Purpose: Biblical Poetics and Interpretation
By Harold Fisch
Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1988. 205 pp. $37.50 (10.95 pb.).

The age-old tension in the study of poetry between the aesthetic and the didactic receives a powerful reconception in this study of biblical poetry, one of the most useful books to appear in the spate of new works on Hebrew poetry. As his title well indicates, Fisch, a professor of English and comparative literature with a specialist's knowledge of Hebrew, refuses to let go of either side of that tension. The reader is taken into the way poetry works, not in principle, but in the study of particular texts-not all of them strictly poetry, by the way. But in the analysis of particular books,

109 - Poetry with a Purpose: Biblical Poetics and Interpretation

stories, and poems, this interpreter lets a reader see how meaning is developed out of the language and working of the poetry.

One of the principal claims of the book is that often the form of the text sets up expectations in the reader that are then undermined or overthrown, a kind of deconstruction, though Fisch is not burdened with that term. For example, the story of Esther with its style and non-theological character seems to be a romantic novel of the Persian court. But covertly in the narrative, "another kingship is at work, one about which nothing is said and yet which shows itself able to manage the entire business of the kingdom and steer it in a direction different from that which any of the actors could have anticipated." Similarly, in Job, the expectations that every reader experiences of dealing with a stark tragedy of the most classic type are thwarted, not by discovering, as some have said, that we have here a comedy, but by the climactic encounter in the divine speeches with "a magnificent display of creative energy that dispels the tragic mood, destroying the expected curve that would lead us to the final demise of the hero."

Chapters on the Song of Solomon, Qohelet, Hosea, and Deuteronomy 32 comprise the rest of the book. As a whole, it is a demonstration that literary analysis can be placed in the service of a powerfully religious as well as poetic understanding of the biblical text. One might not expect to turn to such a work as this to learn about Israel's God and the nature of covenant, but those are among the riches any reader of this fine study will encounter.

Patrick D. Miller
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, N.J.